The poem is always about looking at a blackbird, but it is not always about the blackbird.
In the same way the paintings are about looking at the jack-in-the pulpit, and not always about the plant.
It's all about point of view. We see what we choose; we look at things the way we wish to see them.
And we are back to Emerson - he wants us to rethink our literature and our art for ourselves.
What is our relationship to the work, not what should be our relationship to the work.
"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds."
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his address The American Scholar to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University
(yeah, I know - not exactly Everyman, but the idea works for me).
In the same way the paintings are about looking at the jack-in-the pulpit, and not always about the plant.
It's all about point of view. We see what we choose; we look at things the way we wish to see them.
And we are back to Emerson - he wants us to rethink our literature and our art for ourselves.
What is our relationship to the work, not what should be our relationship to the work.
"We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds."
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his address The American Scholar to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University
(yeah, I know - not exactly Everyman, but the idea works for me).
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